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ADDRESS 

ON OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 
April 30, 18G3. 

DELIVERED IN WATERTOWN, 

BY 

REV. JOHN WEISS. 



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BOSTON: 
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 

245, Washington Street. 
1863. 



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$jtor%ru .Strength anb Mealmess. 



ADDRESS 

ON OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 

April 30, 18G3> . # 

DELIVERED IN WATERTOWN, 



REV. JOHN WEISS. 



BOSTON: 
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 

245, Washington Street. 
1863. 









61 SOS 

'OS 



Jtortbcrn Stttngtlr an)) Mealiness. 



Two years have passed away since the first gun of 
treason summoned Americans to the defence of their 
form of government, and to a fresh valuation of the 
principles which it pretended to represent. Men 
live fast in such times, and gray hairs make more 
rapidly than usual. We have been sternly taught to 
know things never before suspected; to hurriedly 
revise what we knew previously ; to count our 
acquisitions by the marks of suffering. There is no 
doubt that the country has made much progress in 
self-knowledge. Can it show any progress in the 
vindication of her best ideas? 

The Northern mind has been, till very lately, so 
desponding, that a person ignorant of affairs would 
have presumed failure at most points, and in direc- 
tions the most vital. Never was melancholy so 
causeless, or so continually threatened by the facts. 
The American man of business is trained in a poor 
school, if a tenacious cheeriness be any thing worth 



a man's while to protect and cultivate. His moods 
follow the fluctuations of trade, the condition of the 
market, the prospects for crops and supplies, the rise 
and fall of stocks. He watches every thing ner- 
vously, — the total of exports and imports, the rates 
of exchange and insurance, the complexion of local 
politics. Every bulletin extravagantly raises or de- 
presses him. A victory is on the point of quenching 
the Rebellion ; a defeat is sure to precipitate foreign 
intervention. Unhappily, we are a reading people, 
and newspapers are not dear. We should have been 
happier if we had not devoured so many columns 
of special correspondents' views, — men on the spot 
with powerful microscopes, who hold up the war, as 
a lecturer displays a drop of putrid water, to startle 
and distress us with the monstrous vices and mis- 
takes it has engendered. " Can the country swallow 
this, and live ? " we have exclaimed. Yes, all this, 
and more, as harmlessly as water. Too many news- 
papers put the country's happiness in peril more 
certainly than all those inevitable accessories of a 
great contest like that which we have waged, and 
are on the point of bringing to a successful termina- 
tion. 

Let a brief retrospect instruct our fears. What 
was the task which lay before us two years ago, and 
how much of it has been accomplished? When 
President Lincoln called for seventy thousand men, 
and the rioters at Montgomery were laughing at his 
simplicity, a great slaveholding tendency was on the 



point of consolidating every Southern and Border 
State into the unity of Rebellion. The sin of fifty 
years rose wrathfully, and held its poisoned cup to 
the trembling lips of the country. Not a Border 
State would send a man to cover Washington. Gov- 
ernors insulted the Executive with impunity, and 
encouraged citizens to arm in the interest of treason 
rather than of law. Forts, arsenals, and navy -yards, 
points of defence, and the means for defending, fell 
into rebellious hands. Washington had slavery 
behind and before, determined, malignant, command- 
ing every approach, conscious of secret treason at 
the North that was supported by a widely ramified 
society. Some of the best officers of the army and 
the navy turned their swords against the mother's 
bosom that had just been nourishing them. Ships 
and regiments were scattered. There was distrac- 
tion in the place of concentration, a deliberate under- 
valuing of the hostile power, a delusive expectation 
of some early adjustment. Every thing conspired 
to paralyze the country, and to make disunion an 
accomplished fact. 

In this condition, we commenced the undertaking 
to repossess important points, to recover control of 
the great streams and harbors, and to slowly press 
back the tide of Rebellion. At the most, we hoped 
to preserve neutrality among the Border States ; 
and as for the institution of slavery, that was still 
the great American taboo, upon which no hand could 
be laid. 



We began with secret treason at home, and ill-will 
abroad. We were embarrassed by not exactly know- 
ing the extent of these hostile feelings, and what 
influence they would exert. At this time, the 
boundary of the United States of North America 
could be drawn with difficulty from Fortress Mon- 
roe, skipping treasonable counties along the Chesa- 
peake, avoiding Baltimore, clinging to the Pennsyl- 
vania line, and down the Obio as far as Cairo. As 
a boy plays hop-scotch, it might be traced from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi ; and there it stopped : 
and nothing but the sudden uprising of the people 
kept it there for a while, till the process of recon- 
struction could commence. In the Gulf of Mexico, 
the flag waved over the single sand island upon which 
Fort Pickens is built. 

We really knew nothing of the art of war, nor 
how armies should be enrolled, disciplined, victualled, 
and clothed. We had no improved cannon or pro- 
jectiles. Routine pervaded the service by sea and 
land; an iron-clad was undreamed of; cavalry was 
considered superfluous; political aspirants hastened 
for commissions, and avaricious traders began plun- 
dering the Government by contract. The first popu- 
lar enthusiasm was the only gleam that shot athwart 
this sullen sky ; and, notwithstanding this enthusi- 
asm, what ignorance pervaded the popular mind as 
to the historical emergency ! Few persons counted 
correctly the strokes of the hour which was striking. 
The political and moral connection of events with 



the past history of the country ; the absolute neces- 
sity of the struggle ; the impossibility of a peaceful 
solution ; the terrible purposes of the slave-power ; 
the insignificance of the slave, his dread of rising, 
his inability to help us, his immense importance as 
the war-making power of a secession movement, — 
what crude and contradictory theories were afloat 
respecting the real nature and the elements of the 
crisis! Such ignorance is more weakening than 
the defection of fleets and armies ; for it was con- 
tinually sending a boy to perform a man's errand. 
When the history of a nation is reaching suddenly 
forward to a great conclusion, what kind of a ges- 
ture will she make, if the people she wants to save 
have not made up their minds that they really need 
vigorous saving, and complain that she pulls them 
along in striding? The politicians tried to catch 
this winged History, and harness her to their plough. 
In fifty days, this rugged bit of ground would be 
turned up, and the season's work well over. But 
the ploughshare of God's thought, driven by the 
dread event, was cleaving the nation's mind, and lay- 
ing it open to the sun and rain of heaven. History 
has underscored her intention with the blood of two 
campaigns. She said, " Absolute freedom, all the 
rights of man to all men, union for the sake of 
liberty ; " but we heard it not till successive cannon- 
thunders translated it into the vernacular. 

But, although this position seemed gloomy enough, 
how would its gloom have deepened if we could have 



foreseen every complication, obstacle, and distress 
which the war itself has developed ! To have anti- 
cipated, under those early circumstances, a struggle 
of this magnitude, and crowded with such tremen- 
dous embarrassments, would have sent the people's 
blood from the cheek to the heart, routed in advance 
by an appalling prospect. Fortunately, the war and 
the people have grown together, and every nettle 
of danger has unexpectedly put forth a flower of 
safety. 

What, then, has been achieved? 

The boundary of the United States has been 
steadily encroaching upon the eclipse of Rebellion, 
and the line has never for a moment receded. Fol- 
lowing the Potomac to the Blue Bridge, it runs 
down to North Carolina, cutting in half the Old 
Dominion. Tennessee will soon plant the flag upon 
her southern limit, on its way to the Gulf. Practi- 
cally, Kentucky belongs to the United States, not- 
withstanding her disloyal element. Self-interest will 
soon compel her to share the sentiment which has 
fixed Missouri irrevocably upon the Northern side. 
Of all the points which we have recovered by land 
or sea, we have lost again only the harbor of Gal- 
veston. If we speak of immediate probabilities, it 
is reasonable to say, that we shall control the Missis- 
sippi ; and, when the United States pass freely up and 
down that stream, its western bank will not long be 
the limit of their practical jurisdiction. 

We have tried the strength of Northern treason ; 



we know where it is, and what its means and objects 
are. In every town and village of the North, the 
members of the two classes — sympathizers with 
slavery, and opponents of the Administration — are 
well known. Disaffection is unmasked, and brought 
to daylight, where it chafes hitherto in vain against 
the deliberate purpose of the people. This is one of 
the greatest achievements of the war. 

"We need not speak of the improvements in the 
service by land and sea : they are too numerous. In 
the act of engaging the enemy, we learn to improve 
our whole equipment; in protecting the national 
life, we test each novelty of warfare for the benefit 
of the civilized world : so that, when we emerge from 
this contest, it will be with an intelligence formida- 
bly armed, springing like Minerva, full-panoplied, 
from the racking forehead of the country. 

Foreign intervention, which was never imminent, 
is now less probable than ever. The people of 
England are becoming instructed upon the cause 
and object of the Rebellion. We may well o-rant 
them a little time to acquire a healthy opinion on 
this point; for we took some time ourselves: it had 
to be beaten into our heads as into theirs. The at- 
tack of the French upon Mexico was an imperial 
speculation, inspired by glory, Catholicism, stock- 
jobbing, and the chance of swindling or of helping 
the Confederate States according to events. The 
unexpected resistance of the Mexicans continues to 
save us from a possible complication in that quarter; 



10 



while the Polish insurrection is a European event of 
so grave a nature, that it distracts the single purpose 
of the French emperor. Indeed, it is my opinion, 
that this spark, which we call the Polish revolution, 
will run through all the liberal tinder of Europe ; 
it will spread, and not go down. If a man is dis- 
posed to take advantage of your embarrassments, the 
least gesture from afar may divert his glance just 
long enough till you recover a position. The snap- 
ping of a twig scares the tiger from his meditated 
spring. 

And what solid triumphs have been wrested from 
slavery itself! What are slaves worth in Dela- 
ware ? What will an able-bodied negro sell for in 
Maryland, in Western Virginia, in Missouri, and up 
and down the Mississippi ? What is slavery worth 
to-day in Louisiana ? Not so much as the buttons on 
Gen. Banks's coat. Emancipation has been pro- 
claimed in the District of Columbia. Slavery is 
henceforth illegal in the Territories of the United 
States. Maryland, Missouri, Western Virginia, will 
accept the scheme of compensation. What will sla- 
very, thus girdled by free States, be worth in Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee ? And the great Proclamation 
of the new year speaks a word which cannot be 
recalled, — a legal word, that lifts the idea of eman- 
cipation into its place of power in Congress, in the 
Judiciary, in every department of the Government, 
into every town-meeting between the Atlantic and 
Pacific. Will a premature peace, followed by politi- 



11 



cal intrigue, be able to dislodge it? The past, at 
least, is secure. The country has let loose a tendency 
that will become greater than its actual triumphs, if 
the people continue to hold Northern treason under 
foot, till victory, followed by an armed occupation of 
rebellious States, shall make the Presidential word 
take flesh upon every plantation, and chattels shall 
stand up living souls. 

Let us not omit from our estimate the effect of 
this struggle in refining and lifting up the people's 
hearts. War does not debase a country which wages 
it to sustain national existence, and to promote the 
welfare of mankind. When passion and self-interest 
inspire a war, defeat is a great blessing. Our costly 
suffering will be the salvation of the South, as it has 
been the ennobling of ourselves. When every State 
can count its graves by thousands of sons who took 
the field for the common defence, from Maine to 
Missouri, for whom all the ordinary implements of 
trade and labor were welded into a weapon, and 
all the customary feelings into a sentiment of duty, 
there is unity, like that which sorrow creates within 
a house. Tidings of wounds and death travel to 
and fro on every wire ; but the telegraph itself 
does not connect these States together so firmly as 
the news does which it transmits. There is a com- 
mon throb of anguish and pride, a common awe in 
the presence of the invisible, a common prayer for 
the Almighty strengthening, a common glorying that 
death came in the way of duty. In this religious 



12 



stillness there is an opportunity for the most pre- 
cious of the country's ideas to take root and flourish. 
When sometimes I hear a father read those tender 
letters, which contain last messages delivered from 
some comrade's pen, the sole relics of death's mo- 
ment in the skirmish and the battle, it seems to 
me as if the souls of these brave sons had not gone 
to heaven, but had come home. Death said to them, 
" Your country must be reinforced ; " and they 
hasten at the call, to deepen our religiousness, in- 
flame our patriotism, and confirm our thoughts with 
the sincerity which they gained in dying. 

Notwithstanding the flattering nature of this retro- 
spect which the Divine Providence has secured for 
us, there is matter enough for humiliation. It is no 
formal confession of generalities which we have to 
make at the call of the President. This unfinished 
war is itself a witness against that unfaithfulness of 
the popular mind, which was willing to see the evils 
of the country grow to be so monstrous, that nothing 
but the sword could cure them. And the duration of 
the war will measure the extent and virulence of the 
sins which thrived upon our apathy. The axe is laid 
unto the root. This is one of the great periods in 
the life of a people when God grows tired of com- 
promises, and hews down every tree which does not 
bear his fruit. We have not yet touched the bottom 
of this war, which is our retribution. Slavery drew 
a portion of its vitality from Northern soil. Its sub- 
tle rootlets undermined the surface, and fastened to 



13 



every thing that was immoral and unmanly in the 
Northern heart. Can their intricate clasp be undone 
without drawing deeply on our blood ? They are not 
yet undone ; and God's right hand shall pull at them, 
and tear them away, though pieces of the flesh go 
with them, if our heart will not make a cheaper 
sacrifice. Have we stood for two years amid these 
graves, and have not discerned that this is a day of 
God's coming, when he shall thoroughly purge his 
threshing-floor of this Republic, and gather up his 
wheat? Who is this that cometh with bloody gar- 
ments, trampling hearts like grapes for the new wine 
of his kingdom ? It is the long-suffering God of 
inexorable justice. When the worst comes, and he 
has to choose between sparing our hearts and sparing 
his immutable decrees, he rises terribly, and casts 
our hearts into his wine-press. Oh, wonderful maker 
of the world's sound vintages ! Out of these very 
hearts his justice is expressed. We suffer, but yield 
the fruits of righteousness. 

So long as the war lasts, it is a judge that sits in 
purple robes, and calls a delinquent people to its 
feet. How mad we were with money and the wild 
joys of speculation ! How luxury and profuse dis- 
play, and vulgar styles of living, built their streets 
of palaces, and sat within, scoffing at all gentleness, 
humility, and temperance, and forbidding even the 
broken victuals to be tossed to the Golden Rule that 
begged at the proud doors ! The merchants and the 
politicians lobbied against the Beatitudes. Intellect 



14 



was salaried to believe and teach a lie. How the 
nation laughed when the words of scorn rolled be- 
neath the dome-like forehead ! — " There is no higher 
law. Take an eagle's flight above the Alleghanies, 
and find no higher law. There is nothing better 
than the laws which men have made." And the 
merchants, and the ministers, and the lawyers, and 
the judges laughed, and said " Amen ! " And all the 
little traders thanked God that there was no higher 
law. But God answers to-day, and the message 
leaps from every cannon, — " Unless my law be 
within your laws, woe to your laws ! " 

How the politicians built their platforms, and 
cringed as Slavery ascended the steps to dictate its 
crime to freemen ! How the people thundered their 
affirmative to resolutions which denied the first prin- 
ciples of the country, and the real spirit of her Con- 
stitution, by denying the natural rights of man ! And 
all the merchants with Southern connections said 
that conscience itself was a luxury, which they 
would give up to save the Union. Now, the Union 
and conscience are the same : if conscience be deli- 
vered, the Union is saved. The Union and conscience 
are together on the rack of war : the tie stretches to 
the point of breaking. Without conscience, it will fly 
apart like ravelled tow. 

How we amused ourselves with an inferior and 
degraded race of people ! We had cant names for 
them, and saluted them with coarse noises in the 
street. We crowded into places of entertainment 



15 



where the peculiarities of their body and mind were 
seasoned with jests and music, till the most popular 
amusement of the middle class of this nation turned 
upon the degradation of another class. Can a people 
do that, and live? — laugh in that way, without draw- 
ing tears mingled with blood ? Can the heart derive 
a harmless pleasure from the shame and suffering 
of the unprotected? See how coarse the people 
grew in consequence of that ! how little they thought 
of the base act of returning a fugitive ! and how 
much sublimer they thought an Ethiopian entertain- 
ment was than the golden rule of him who said, " In- 
asmuch as ye did it not to them, ye did it not to me " ! 
And now, because we did it not to them, the same 
heavenly voice cries, " Depart — into the fire of bat- 
tle ; become purged by fire ! " And the race which 
we despised so smilingly is called by God to take 
rank with us in battle, beneath the flag which we 
thought waved only for the white men ; whose stars 
we scornfully imagined were emblems of exclusive 
truths and privileges. There is nothing exclusive in 
the designs which God has for a country. When he 
would raise up a nation, he is no respecter of per- 
sons. It is not your privilege even to bleed and die 
exclusively. The slave must see the stars where 
before he saw only the stripes, else you will change 
places with him as the stars are blotted from your 
firmament. This day, God dips a people's contempt 
in blood. 

How well the negro contrasts his occasional noble 



16 



services with this contempt ! What did one say, 
when a flat-boat, filled with soldiers, grounded under 
the shower of the enemy's bullets in attempting to 
land at Rodman's Point ? He was the only negro 
on board. All the soldiers prostrated themselves in 
the bottom of the boat to escape the fire. " Some- 
body's got to die to git us out of dis," he said ; " and 
it may as well be me." He succeeded in pushing off 
the boat, and fell pierced by five bullets. Yes, 
somebody's got to die to get us out of this. The 
instinct of the country spoke in the heroism of this 
despised and rejected man. 

But our contempt is not yet all dipped in the sacri- 
ficial stream. The nation still holds in its bosom 
the men who deny all rights except their own, and 
who want a Constitution, as old tyrants wanted 
the peine forte et dure, — a machine to squeeze 
out of other men their breath. This vulgar and ma- 
lignant element, which parades the sacred name of 
Democracy, has survived the chastening of the war, 
still dreams and plots an ignominious peace, and 
prevents a perfect sacrifice from being offered up to 
God. It hates the slave, as it ever did ; it hates 
the slave's friend, as it ever must do ; it hates the 
rolling of the wheels of God's mercy ; it loves itself, 
and hates mankind as despots hate who honestly 
pronounce their proper name. Is this a day of 
humiliation ? Who, I pray you, shall be humiliated 
on this day, if it be not the man who is willing to 
transmit another war to his children by transmitting 



IT 



its yet unvanquished cause ; whose sympathies are 
with the class that lives by an exclusive privilege ; 
who is willing to take that slaveholding hand 
which is dipped to the elbow and to the armpits in 
the blood of honest farmers' sons and of mechanics, 
who are the bone and gristle of a true Democracy ? 
For shame, false Democrats, false editors of treason, 
false freemen, who care for all this blood no more 
than if it ran, a pig's slaughter, in the gutter ; who 
would sell it all to have slavery back to-morrow, as 
men sell bullocks' blood to manufacturers ! To have 
it written above all these graves, " This man died to 
let slavery back again into America," — would you 
like to have that the epitaph of your splendid friends 
at Newbern, in the stout intrenchment of Washington, 
before Vicksburg and Fredericksburg, in Nims's bat- 
tery, or Dupont's fleet ? May God save them, but 
not save them to see other graves so insulted and 
dishonored ! The blood which your children spilt at 
Antietam, and all along the ravening fronts of battle, 
must nourish God, not Satan. See to it that slavery 
does not taste a drop of that redeeming liquid. See 
to it by humiliating the men who will not humiliate 
themselves in this time of your trials. The shield 
which History shall lift up in the face of your coun- 
try's future will have one side lustrous with the 
names of your maimed or dead preservers, and the 
other side infamous with the names of your living 
betrayers. Every town and village shall furnish its 
list of glory and of shame to make that record true. 
2 



18 



We have all cause for humiliation in the weak- 
ness of our moral convictions. In this protracted 
struggle, despondency has often seized us because 
we have secretly doubted whether, after all, Slavery 
were not as strong as Freedom. Many people begin 
to say, that it is only a question of time and numbers, 
and that the side which has the last dollar will pre- 
serve or dissolve the Union. This shows a wavering 
faith in the ideas which the Union represents. Men 
are astonished to find the South so capable of resist- 
ance, and so well provided at every point with all the 
latest requisites of warfare. They recognize in its 
unanimity and tenacity the elements which have lent 
success to every cause. The Rebellion is a lens, which 
brings all the intelligence and passion of the South 
concentrated into a fiery focus, which its leaders 
flash in our faces whithersoever we turn. All its 
women are of one mind and resolution : their hatred 
of the North is a fresh soul to slavery. Even the 
best lyric* which the war has produced has been 
written on the Southern side, and sings a happy 
inspiration of pathos and high resolve. If in the 
beginning we doubted whether Southern men were 
in earnest, that doubt has been buried in a hundred 
thousand graves. 

We have, been so often baffled, that some have 
secretly whispered, " Perhaps, after all, God intends 
to make two nations here, and to grant a lease of 

* "Maryland, — my Maryland." 



19 



brilliant existence to a slaveholding Republic, such 
as Athens and Sparta were. The best we can do 
is to maintain against it the southernmost possible 
line, and set up the glory of free labor and intelli- 
gence." It seems to some people as if this contest 
had become a fight between two powers of nearly 
equal consideration in the sight of History and Pro- 
vidence ; for, if great principles of freedom cannot 
be vindicated, their greatness does not appear. The 
stronger side is the successful one ; and God is 
always plainly on the stronger side. 

When we doubt our own convictions in this way, 
it is time to feel humiliated. If a nation has no 
faith in its legitimate principle, it cannot stand 
before an illegitimate one, be it ever so puny. It is 
time for us to say to God, " Increase our faith in the 
divine nature of free labor and free men," and to 
ask God if it be indeed true, as some of us suspect, 
that he has a leaning toward the iniquity of slavery. 
For it comes to that, when we fall into despond- 
ency : we say virtually, that God is on the point of 
joining the enemy, disgusted with our failures, 
weaknesses, and jealousies, disheartened at our want 
of organizing talent and whole-souled patriotism, 
driven by stress of imbecility into the arms of des- 
perate and skilful men, who make no secret of their 
godless intention, but who, nevertheless, win a kind 
of admiration from the Divine Mind by their gifts of 
pluck and strategy. God would doubtless prefer to 
be with us; but we are such children, with our 



20 



superfine views and feelings, and have made such 
botchwork of the glorious lesson which he set, that 
he finds villanous energy more exhilarating, and will 
support the able action, though it be the riveting of 
fetters upon men made in his image and supported 
by his breath. 

No : such disheartening moods do not represent 
the general mind : we are traitors to the nation 
when we indulge them. This is not a contest of 
ambition ; here are not two passions nearly matched. 
We fight for the supremacy of no vulgar motive. 
On the one hand is the yearning of all mankind for 
the right of owning itself, working for itself, and 
living intelligently for the common good. The pro- 
phets of poverty and misery have, in all ages, 
dreamed of that country in which men should 
possess their own souls and bodies, and live untram- 
melled to the praise of God. This prophecy of a 
land, in which no man, but where mankind, shall 
reign, dawned in the conscious hearts of our fathers, 
who saw that America was the land of the poor man's 
dream. That yearning was called once "the spirit 
of 76:" but it is the spirit and the fact of '63; 
and that, with all civilized and honorable things, all 
beneficent institutions, all knowledge, art, all manual 
and mental skill, all refined delights and manly ex- 
pectations, expresses the divine intent of God. 

On the other side is a direct crime against 
God, because an explicit contradiction of these 
things, in the interest of barbarism for the mass, 



21 



and culture for the few. It is a crime that is four 
million times repeated every day. It is carved 
in the crouching attitude of every slave, stamped in 
the brutified countenance of every poor white, 
announced from every auction -block, where God, 
in the persons of his little ones, is knocked off to 
bidders. It poisons the edge of every bayonet, and 
its forked tongue darts viciously from the cannon's 
jaws. 

Do you think that the power is on this side be- 
cause the newspapers tell you that we have no 
generals, but a great many contractors and a horde 
of bunglers ; that the blockade is inefficient, starva- 
tion a chimera, Knights of the Golden Circle a million 
strong, every ship-yard in England engaged for the 
rebels, and every town in America a harbor for 
traitors ? The power is on the side of Faith. A 
great popular conviction that God prefers light to 
darkness, and democracy to aristocracy, fed by the 
obstinate prayers of all men and women, is the Gene- 
ral which leads your hosts, and the draft which 
keeps them recruited. Every moment that your 
faith wavers, God feels that the North is weaker : 
when you believe in him, your salvation is at hand. 
Is there a God? and is there a difference between 
justice and injustice? O North Wind ! blow strong 
with God's breath in twenty million men ! 



How soon the grass grows over the earthquake's 



22 



edge, and down the chasm into which houses slipped, 
marking the way they went by the stains of lace- 
rated hearts ! The little blades come and feed like 
insects upon every blotch of butchery, till the terror 
and suffering have all disappeared. So no miasma 
spreads ; and children play up and down the green 
slopes where other children were swallowed up 
alive ; and the vine-dresser sings as he picks shriv- 
elled grapes from the full bunches whose roots are 
close to the restless heat below. 

Truth creeps everywhere, like vegetation, and 
appears the most luxuriantly upon the seams and 
fractures of mankind. Lovers repair unconsciously 
to bowers that ruins nourished to conceal their 
unsightliness : in those charming coverts, they sit 
close upon moss-emblazoned epitaphs, and whisper 
the first intimations that they live for ever. 

The Spring emphasizes the usual language of 
Hope with which she claims the year. It gives the 
grass a deeper green, and tills the buds of fruit-trees 
with the flavors of Autumn. In the morning I 
wake with such happiness, that the blue-bird which 
comes close to the window, upon the spray of the 
elm-tree, seems to be singing my own heart-full of 
thanks to God for the forefeeling of victory. A 
pleased surprise appears struggling out of the whole 
face of Nature. There is blood in this grass, and 
mounting to the topmost branches : you will see it 
in the apple-blossoms. It is the blood of your 
kindred, which seemed wasted for nothing as it ran 



23 



away into the pores of the ground, — the precious 
drops which you would so gladly have ransomed, 
and remanded to the heart, if you could have done 
it, standing by with all your fortune, as they fell. 
Short-sighted husbandry of man ! long-sighted eco- 
nomy of God ! It gives America a greener spring 
than she has seen since Lexington. It sends into 
all the fruit such a flavor as is seldom tasted more 
than once a century. Hail, year of God's farming ! 
Hail, summer of an emancipated continent, which 
shall lay up in storehouse and barn the great truths 
that were worth the costly dressing of a people's 
blood ! And hail to you all, families, who show the 
mark of the spear in your sides over your hearts, 
out of which you felt some dear blood slip, till you 
almost swooned with the weakness and the anguish ! 
Your blood is all safe : Republican Truth caught it 
as it fell, and you see your children everywhere. If 
we blush with pleasure, it is their blood. You can- 
not look in a single face without seeing them. They 
shall rise in the new life of a country which their 
own arms helped to tear from the embrace of 
Treason that she might be chastely wedded to 
Almighty Truth. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 027 027 8 g 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



